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The One-Use, Self-Destructing DVD Returns
BonrHanzon writes "Looks like DivX (the stupid one, not the codec) has been resurrected in the form of Flexplay. Staples will be selling these movie disks for 5 bucks a pop at the checkout counter. The disks can be played in any DVD player, but a special adhesive will render the disk unplayable 48 hours after the package has been opened. As if our landfills weren't already overflowing with enough crap." The blog post notes that Flexplay has actually been around for 5 years; the Staples distribution deal is what's new.
1. Buy cheaper disposable movie.
2. Rip it to harddrive.
3. Dispose of movie.
4. ???????
5. PROFIT!
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
Staples will be selling these movie disks for 5 bucks a pop at the checkout counter.
Why not just use Netflix then? Unless they are hoping for purely impulse buys, which would be better suited for buying DVDs then simply renting them.
http://flexplay.com/recycling/
You can recycle them. You can return them to the store you bought them at for recycling. You can even get a free mailing label and ship them to flexplay for recycling.
You can also shoot yourself in the face if you're dumb enough to buy this crap.
Why would anyone do this when you can usually rent it for a week cheaper?
The content may expire after 48 hours but somehow I think it'll take a bit longer for the rest of the DVD to move onto the great bargain bin in the sky. Are they that scared about DRM on digital downloads being broken that they're willing to crap up the planet instead?
Here in Australia they're selling once-mainstream DVDs for $6-$8 all over the place. If shoppers would just exhibit a little patience instead of rushing out to buy the latest shiny, they too would benefit from the eventual lower prices.
I saw the first full page ad for Blu-Ray disks in a supermarket catalogue today. If the shops keep pushing those, DVDs are only going to get cheaper and cheaper.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
...the submitter picks up on the worst one. There's plenty of landfill space. Really. There are plenty of other ways this is a terrible idea.
These things positively scream "rip me! rip me!"- and if they came with that right, I'd probably buy them just to save me the trouble of downloading them. Until then, sorry guys, combining the shoddy packaging of a pirated copy with the transience of a rental is pretty much a prescription for failure.
why pay $5? You can get $1/day rentals from booths are many places, including Mc Donalds.
So if the discs last 48 hours I could go rent it for 2 days and save myself $3, PLUS avoid generating pointless trash in the process!
Someone should really forbide this practice by law, for the sake of the environment.
And someone should really explain those i**ots that this way they'll give the pirates a simple cheap way to get DVD quality copies, without assles and a few pennies.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I put $10 bucks on the special adhesive being rendered useless due to a chemical hack 48 hours after the first set of these disks hitting the public.
Having a $5 non-degrading dvd wouldn't be all that bad. Illegal means are still lots cheaper (as always).
Looks like it is time to replace your Personality Module. You are a bit to clingy, guess I better replace your fuser to
Well, how's that different from...
1. Rent movie.
2. Rip it to harddrive.
3. Return it.
4. ???????
5. PROFIT!
Effectively, this is just a simpler way of renting movies. In fact, so simple that any regular store can get into that business. They don't need to keep track of who rented what, who's overdue, find and replace scratched movies, etc. It just lets them use their normal logistics, which they have in place and are already in place. And it makes it a lot simpler to "rent" them by mail over the internet too.
It also makes life simpler for people like me, who live half a city away from the nearest movie rental shop. It's more convenient to chuck it into the bin, than have to make a second trip to give it back. In fact, it would save me a lot more trips, since now I'd be able to just go there once and buy a small stack of disposables, and watch them whenever I have time. (The clock starts ticking when you opened it, not when you "rented" it.) No more "omg, I got the whole LOTR trilogy, so it's time to drop everything else and stay awake until 1AM to watch it all. Or just order a small stack of them by mail.
Of course, it has the same caveats as rentals. Including that if someone wants to rip it, they can. It's not a new problem, though. And I'll venture a wild guess that if it wasn't the end of the world or of the movie business before, the new version can't be that much more destructive
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The dvd's will come standard as part of a kit: the degrading dvd will be bundled with a writable dvd.
Oh, so you want me to pay you $5 for something that will self destruct in two days? Sure I'd be glad to... NOT! Who the hell came up with such a stupid idea? Why on earth would I buy this piece of crap when I can rent a DVD for less than that? This shouldn't even be legal and if it is then humanity is more screwed up than I thought.
I have scoured around TFA but can't find much detail on the actual chemical process. Now, I know it's probably all internal and doesn't involve copious amounts of actual liquid adhesive.
But still, would you want to the first person to discover you have left one of these in your player and it just happens to be a rogue one in the batch that has written off your player.
As someone else has said, renting the film for a week is cheaper and buying them new isn't loads more anyway.
The only place I can see these having any place in the market is for the Mission Impossible box set.
... are the movie and music industries ran by a bunch of monkeys suffering from Alzheimer's disease? A three years old would immediately see all these new attempted business models of theirs as unbelievably idiotic ideas. How on Earth is it possible that somebody actually believes such crap could possibly work? This is beyond me. Please, if you are a CEO of a "content" production company, could you enlighten me, pretty please?
- You have a limitted time in which to view it.
- You have to return it. Not everyone lives near a video rental store.
- you will be charged if the disk gets damaged or lost.
If you buy a self destructing DVD- You can buy it on spec and watch it some other time (these have a shelf life)
- You just throw it out when you're done with it.
- The maximum cost is the cost of a disposable DVD.
The environmental damage isn't as big a problem as people seem to think. Much smaller than takeout, and probably less than the waste from a day's food for most people. That and they're recyclable.The main problem is making people realise that this is a rental and not a purchase. When they own the physical media they think they own it. Prices are also a little high, but they don't need a vast number of customers. Just enough movie fans for stores to justify the shelf space.
What about those hapless people who buy one of these things, take it home, and open the package, only to discover that their particular unit had a pinhole leak that let air in and ruined the disc prior to purchase. These people then have to get back in their car and drive back to the store for a refund (when fuel is typically $4 a gallon or more) Even if the store gives them a refund, they are still out the time and fuel money. You probably can't toss these things into your recycling container, so they will probably end up in the trash, since how many people are going to take the time to order the return labels, much less drive out to return the ruined disc?
Compare this to the regular rental disc that has a 99% chance of working perfectly. I just can't see any benefit at all.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
The point here is: Can they become a real content provider channel? That is what is more important. If they have a huge machine in the video club with 4 milion diferent videos and documentaries and the machine burn you in no time the videos asked, then it is usefull. If they only sell you the same crap that they edit in DVD anb Blueray, then it is a waste of time, emule will continue being a better content provider than those DVD's.
if you can read it once, you can rip it once. this technology is flawed in it's design.
shanegrant.com
Walk into any Blockbuster, Best Buy, Circuit City or your local equivalent (even Tower Records here in Israel), and you can buy a plethora of great DVDs--to keep--for $5-7. Why would anyone pay $5 for a one-time use DVD? And does anyone still rent in-store anymore?
"FlexPlay"
No flexibility, and after 48 hours no play!
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Since we are supposed to put everything in airless plastic bag when we are not actually watching them, it would strongly delay the degradation. Anyway, I am reminded that true geeks only buy collector editions anyway.
DIVX is the crappy circuit city DVD rental program. DivX is the codec.
Case matters.
The troll with karma.
This DVD will self destruct in 5 seconds...
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
The entertainment ESPECIALLY the movie industry is out of touch with their base. While I think the TV and RIAA are idiot and are extremely out of touch with their base. At least the RIAA has come up with some half decent solutions (although stupid) like amazon mp3, rapshody/napster (unlimited), audible, etc. Although I think they are all stupid due to DRM and i dont use them anyways but at least are heading towards the digital age (not forcing people to use CDs).
:P).
/end rant
At the same time I think the TV industry is making strides. NBC put full episodes on the net (althouth the player was shit) and now they partnered FOX to make hulu which isn't half bad. Heck for all the work it takes to download a movie off BT
-Find the torrent (its hard to find tvshows compared to movies)
-Download the torrent (ahhhr may take a a few hours)
-Get past ur shitty ISP (shitty ISPs: its comcastic!)
-Than finally watch the video and than delete it
I'll gladly watch a sheer minute of ads in a site which has a better player than youtube. You can resize the player an it will start where you left off. Also there is no annoying parts and you can even preload your shows in advance.
All the industries are doing SOMETHING and even the tv industry is excepting people just aren't willing pay as much for content. Obviously they are making a lot less money money off hulu (1 minute of ads vs 9 minutes) but they figure that it's more money they'de be making than if people downloaded their shows. THEY ARE ADAPTING!!!
The movie industry wants it to the stay the same as when i was buying topgun in laserdisk.
They still consider it illegal (according to the DUMB F*** DMCA) just to put a movie on your IPOD or PC (and I'm talking a DVD that you own). There is no movies on itunes but their is a ton of ad free shows that you can do pretty much anything with (of course there is still DRM but its not as big of a deal for a show their is only so many places you use a video for
DAMNIT MPAA learn something. What you guys should be doing if you weren't still living in the glorious 80s where your focus was guys on the side of the street. What you should do is negotiate with every ISP and have ISP hosted downloadable moviees for dirt cheap (like 2 or 3 bucks) that you can do whatever you want to. Or watch on your TV (um comcast/time warner/Adelphia/Advanced Cable)
DRM is stupid....people will just bypass your DRM and go straight to the net.
If you do ISP hosted downloads
-it'll be super cheap because you're not using any physical bandwidth (probably like a cent or two a movie)
-No shipping or any crap
-Compares in convenience considering how hard it is to download movies.
-Can offer Blue-ray quality videos for dirt cheap (considering that it costs a lot of money to burn blueray) and people could play bluerays on their PS3 (well Sony will be for anything to further their standard considering the PS3 was for the sole objective of pushing blueray).
And i don't want to get to the RIAA. Its almost 5 am and btw im finished itll be 12.
They are also living in the past because of how incredibly easy is to download thousands of songs in a couple hours.
An jeeze ADAPT!!!! Think of new solutions. Jesus if the most protective industry could get over their retardation anyone can.
I think what they need is a guy to tell them that they need this and execute it for them in a decent way (because they won't). Like NBC/FOX would never have made this on thier own it's a good thing these guys from outside the industry did it for them. Andthey only used like 10 million which isn't bad considering the scope of the project such as servers, software R&D (since the damn thing is better than youtube), converting the movies (they are pretty awesome quality and load really fast must be some sweet compression), and such.
*ps: I NEED TO QUIT CAFFIENE
How is a disposable DVD different than all the water bottles, plastic bags, yogurt pots, polystyrene trays, etc. that are currently being dumped by the trillion?
This is a drop in the ocean compared to that. Heck, the snack foods consumed while watching the movie will probably create more garbage than the DVD.
No sig today...
You mean DIVX not DivX!
Given the quality of films today can they make them so they self destruct with bad movies "before" they are played? Could save a lot of pain and suffering especially with Uwe Boll movies.
Ok, so I admit that my Roku box just arrived today, but it's just awesome. $9/month for the unlimited Internet watching. And then don't have to push around a bunch of plastic discs, keep discs in stock in case people want to watch them.
Netflix is positioned to become the next "cable company" without having to lay all this cable. You can pick what you want, when you want it, pause it, skip around, and given 15 seconds or so it will spool up the data and play a perfectly reasonable picture. And with no commercials...
I haven't had cable TV at home for the last decade, because it doesn't provide what I wanted. All I wanted recently was Heroes and Battlestar, but to get those two I had to buy 40 channels of other crap, including commercials.
Or I could just wait for it to come out on DVD. Or lately a bunch of us have been gathering at a friends place for it.
The installed base of DVD players is huge, but Netflix will already bring you the plastic disc, to your home, so it's only missing the ability to have an impulse buy the plastic disc.
For the $100 box, you have the ability to get what you want without having to wait for the disc to arrive, don't have to return it, and can watch all you can stand.
Netflix is poised to eat a lot of other folks lunch.
Sean
DIVX died because it also required a special PLAYER...
At least they got it right this time.
Could work, might even make money if they have decent movies available.
I can see these being sold at airports etc where returns aren't practical.
When I heard for the first time about this stuff, it was several years ago, I couldn't believe my ears. How someone should waste time and sources for developing such a thing like this one. It's the most stupid thing ever to develop crap. It's like in futurama where they needed material of exact density as crap so they created crap factory. However I still can not see the protection against copy and I see big ecological problem. Isn't there big enough problem with plastic bottles? So why add useless beer pads that used to be movie. And on the other hand it is quite unpolite to throw away artistic piece and product oh human work immediately without corresponding usage. I cannot say more that Economy, Advertising and Entertainment is directly against ecology. MArtin Åimek
How about instead we forbid by law geeks and gamers from upgrading their hardware more often than every 5 years? There's no real reason you need the latest and best, and you could rent disposable CD-ROMs every night for five years without causing nearly the disposal problems of one junked computer chassis or monitor, what with all that lead 'n' stuff in the soldered circuit boards.
For that matter, why should you be legally able to buy a new pair of gym shoes just because they fit better? I bet throwing aware a pair of Nikes adds as much plastic to the landfill as six months' worth of CD rentals. Just fucking suffer with the blisters until your calluses get thick enough. Otherwise Mother Earth is doomed, I tell you.
Sheesh. I remember when environmentalism was a rational appreciation for limits and the unexpected consequences of one's action. Now it's like some kind of weird dark Krishna cult, complete with mindlessly chanted slogans and buzzwords ("recycle!") polished of nearly all rational meaning.
I can go into my local Tesco (our Wal Mart) and buy an EOL real DVD for £3.
-1 not first post
Doesn't sound too flexible. Sounds rather rigid.
FAQs are evil.
Jeez just get a astronaut buddy to take a few on the next shuttle launch. Open a bunch of them on a eva mission and rip them in space. Is it really that hard to figure a work around?
Or on the flip side have a friend in a oxygen tent open them, the adhesive probably will react faster in a pure oxygen environment and destruct sooner. Sue the company out of business for not being able to view the disc for the whole labeled 48hr period.
Its an abbreviation , so write it as DIVX. Not to mention, the added advantage of limiting the confusion of the stupid one with DivX
It means that I never have to go back to the video store. That is worth a 4x price premium for me. (Oh noes, my entertainment costs increased for $.50 to $2 an hour... oh, phew, not a starving college kid anymore so that difference is no longer supremely important to me.)
It means I never have to worry about forgetting to go back to the video store (I let two months worth of rental time rot because I just got busy and forgot about movies for a while -- the rental *store* would have charged me boku bucks and sent nastygrams to get their property back, the rental *service* put a little sticker on my database record saying We Love You Man Feel Free To Keep Paying $20 A Month As Long As You Want).
It means I never have to worry about finding time to go to the video store on a day where I just don't have the freaking time. (See point #2.) Sometimes life gets busy and when life gets busy "Drats, I need to return these DVDs" is not a worry I want to have.
(My $20 a month plan is for the Japanese equivalent of Netflix -- 2 DVDs at a time, capped at 8 cycles a month. I rarely use anything close to my allotment. I prefer (legal) downloads to renting, honestly, but much of what I want to see is not available in that format.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Let me see which method of acquiring movies is best for the customer (using a massive sample size of me): I'm going to take a big film from last year as my example which I'm going to use for all of my comparisons. With no particular preference for anything, I'm going to use Cloverfield as my example. Regular DVD Purchase
It might just be me, but I'm one of these people that can go back and watch a DVD over and over again - not back to back, that'd get dull really quickly - but every few months, I can go back and watch a movie I really liked, either with a different group of friends or just because I really liked the film. I didn't think much of Cloverfield but if I did, I could get it from Amazon for $15.99. Just over three times more than the auto-rot Flexi-DVD thingy, and I can watch it whenever I want, with whoever I want, forever (or certainly for a lot longer than 48 hours). I can put it on my shelf, in my DVD rack, lend it to my friends, sell it for a few bucks when I get bored of it, anything. All that justifies the higher price point.
Rental This Flexplay system is $5 per 48-hour self-destructing disc. If a brick-and-mortar rental store wanted $5 for a 2-day rental, I'd go somewhere else, though YMMV on local rental store prices. Alternatively, I could also go to Neflix or Blockbuster's online service and get unlimited monthly rentals (one at a time) for $8.99, so the rental price for each DVD goes down with every rental. If you only watch one or two DVDs a month so $8.99 is too much for you, both Blockbuster and Netflix have a basic plan of $3.99 (Blockbuster) or $4.99 (Netflix) - so I'm getting Cloverfield either cheaper or at the same price point as Flexplay, but I know the disc will play properly, I won't get any of the 'special adhesive' inside my player, and if I want to have the guys round to have a few beers and watch a great film the next weekend, I can. Hell, if I go to Blockbuster I can even save a dollar.
Piracy
Finally, the thing the MPAA is probably trying to compete with with these self-destructing discs, the evil pirate. using everyone's favourite Pirate Bay, a quick search reveals a Cloverfield DVD rip with over two thousand seeds. If I feel like getting fancy, there's a 4Gb Blu-Ray rip with 181 seeds. With a decent internet connection, I could have the regular DVD rip within a couple of hours tops. If I've just been to the store, I'm not going to come straight in and watch a DVD right away, I'm going to wait until I've put everything away. I'm going to wait until all the other jobs I have to do are done before I sit down to watch the film I just saw at the counter. I can afford that wait of 2 hours, if I was the type to pirate movies, then I'd just do that and put the $5 towards beer. If I was just going out to get a film I'd do this as well - you know where my local Staples is? It's at least a 2 hour round trip.
Legal Downloads Finally, the option Joe Public probably uses less, though I think it's a great idea. iTunes does movies now, but they don't have Cloverfield, so that rules them out of my strict example, but their movies seem to be priced at around $10, so I can just pay double the price and keep the film forever. Seems reasonable, but the real killer is Amazon, who will rent me the film for a whole month for a dollar less than Flexplay will let me have it for 2 days. People will say that Flexplay gives you the physical product, but does that matt
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
- no DVD logo (may or may not play on real DVD players).
- disc contains a dye which reacts with oxygen to discolour it (either to red or black).
This is in the resin bonding layer between the two layers of a DVD-9. For DVD-5 it's in the surface coating.
48 hours is the "alleged" time the disc will last before being unplayable. Since this is a chemical reaction expect that time to plummet dramatically in hot environments. So, how are they going to deal with the howls of indignation from customers who open the thing, decide they don't have time to play it today, and find they can't even play it once (assuming their DVD player doesn't bork on it)?
Staples will back out of this one real fast...
Andy
Is it just me or does a pure Oxygen environment and a Lazer sound like a dangerous situation (or cool - depending on whether your the ripper or the watcher)
Microsoft also uses a similar model. Their popular Windows product starts to deteriorate immediately after installation with all of the bloatware and is unusable within 48 hours.
It would be good to have something like this for newspapers, but for a completely different reason. I think that's funny. Ink is made to keep its color, and requires recycling to use aggressive and dirty methods. If ink would be made to degrade quickly, it could make recycling a lot cleaner.
Why would anyone spend $5 to have a copy of a movie for 2 days when they can go into a McDonalds or other RedBox location in most major metro areas and pick up the same movie for $1/day?
Anyone else worried about sticking a DVD covered in adhesive in to a DVD player?
How many discs can you play before the drive is knackered?
What seems like a better way to do this is have the customer pay their 5 dollars but do it like the milk jugs, beer bottles in some places. If the user returns them to the store, they get a refund of 10-50 cents. Not enough to make throwing them away completely inconcievable but enough to make you think twice before throwing them away.
if you don't give people an incentive to recycle these puppies most people won't do it.
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
Since you already have rights to the work's initial medium, does this mean than hacks are not violations of DMCA?
They provided technology for the ORIGINAL disk to self-destruct. You are not breaking tech to make copies, you are *preventing breakage*.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's no good until it violently self-destructs five seconds after finishing its first playback, wrecking your DVD player and belching smoke all over the general vicinity.
You can request a free postage-paid mailing label to return the used products (watched disks) to Flexplay. All they ask for is the UPC code on the back of the product. Boy, this looks like an idea with a hell of a lot of screw-U potential. Have fun, be young and drink Pepsi (and be sure to recycle that empty aluminum can, bro.)
http://www.flexplay.com/recycling/prepaid_label/
That's kind of steep. I can get $5 movies at the bargain bin at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc. Or I can rent a movie from Blockbuster for $4 and keep it for 2 weeks. Or I can use netflix and rent a bunch of movies for $10 a month, or I can download it from Xbox Live. There seems to be better alternatives to watch a movie.
Can I bum a sig?
What happens if you're playing the disc while it begins to degrade to unreadable? You probably start to get random read errors, but can it harm the drive?
I'd just rather use video on demand with my cable company, or download via Xbox live. Why even go to staples, driving across town?
I really hope someone sues the company responsible for putting all of these toxic chemicals into landfills.
and yes, discs are made with toxic chemicals.
This is just a horrible waste of resources. Especially when the content could be distributed in harmless electron format.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Obviously, they must be running out of people to sue for downloading movies. This new technology is clearly designed to frustrate even more consumers, and drive them to download so they can keep their profit margin high with lawsuits.
Fortunately (for me), there hasn't been a movie coming out of Hollywood in 20 years that I have the slightest interest in either wasting money on, or risking an infringement lawsuit for downloading.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
find something to remove the adhesive that won't also destroy the plastic. Acetone would remove just about any adhesive, but pretty sure it would do something terrible to the plastic. Windex is fairly safe on plastic and can remove some things (it's just ammonia and detergent iirc).
In the end torrents and netflix are easier and cheaper.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'm wondering how easy it would be to subvert the destructive part? Some possibilities:
1. remove disk from packaging, clean surface with alcohol before the layer hardens
2. remove disk from packaging, spray with thin layer of clearcoat to keep oxygen out. Or perhaps just thin plastic?
Of course ripping the disk is easier. But finding ways around it are more entertaining.
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
Friday 9:00PM: "Hey honey, the baby is finally asleep. Let's watch that new movie we bought."
... okay at least he's asleep now. Let's watch the rest of the movie."
... and check it out, the Leafs are winning 3-1 right now!"
... wanna finish the movie?"
... has it already been 48 hours?"
Friday 9:52PM: "Shit, okay I'll pause the movie while we go figure out why he's crying."
Friday 10:38PM: "Why isn't he going back to sleep? Is he still hungry?"
Friday 11:27PM: "Whew
Friday 11:46PM: "Honey, if you're going to sleep through everything let's just turn it off and go to bed."
Friday 11:58PM: (yes, you guessed right, no sex tonight)
Saturday 2:15PM: "Love to finish that movie honey but if we don't do the grocery shopping we're gonna have no food to eat this week."
Saturday 8:41PM: "That's great that he's asleep already
Saturday 10:42PM: "Okay, Hockey Night in Canada is over
Saturday 11:14PM: "Honey, if you're going to sleep through everything let's just turn it off and go to bed."
Sunday 9:22PM: "What the fuck? This DVD doesn't even play anymore
As we've seen over the years, single-use DVDs are a product with zero demand. So why make them?
I'm sure that they pay a much lower royalty for the content when it is distributed on single-use discs. Now, put them in an impulse-buy area of a retail store at a price only slightly lower than people expect to pay for regular discount DVDs... The market for the product becomes people who don't realize that they are single use at the time of purchase. The only possible point of this product is to profit off the suckers.
Given the various wonderful stories about inventory practice at big box stores, the idea of them stocking a good that will go bad if not hermetically sealed makes me a trifle nervous. Even assuming that some little punk(s) don't realize that running around staples with a pin and popping packages is good clean fun; I suspect there'll be one or two "aw, just shrinkwrap it again and get it back out there" incidents. Hopefully there is a little window or something so that the buyer can see whether or not the disk has already self destructed before they buy.
So what they're really saying is that they can profitably manufacture, distribute, and sell DVD movies for the low price of $5, even after paying some company to add their technology to the disc which not only doesn't enhance the consumer experience, but seriously degrades it. So why do they charge $20 for the other discs again?
To give Jim Phelps his secret message.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
This model is exactly like DiVX except for:
- THEY'RE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!
- DiVX disks used crypto to limit plays, this uses a Mission Impossible self-destructing glue
- DiVX disks could be played at any time later and traded around with coworkers (playing fee applied), this creates piles of literally useless disks
- DiVX disks were not rippable, these (presumably) will be
The only thing they have in common is they're an attempt to cash in on convenience with 'disposable' movies, and that they claim eco-friendliness wrt recycling. Exactly the same, yep.Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Maybe if they were a dollar but five? Not worth it.
DIVX was *NOT* a "disposable" DVD. The disc did not self destruct.
The data on a DIVX disc was encrypted, and could only be played in a DIVX player (DVD player w/ additional hardware/firmware).
A DIVX disc when purchased, included the right to watch the content within 48 hours after starting the initial playback. One could buy a disc and watch it months later if desired.
New titles could be pre-sold in stores and a DIVX player would refuse to play then until the release date encoded on the disc.
After the initial playback period had expired, the disc could be put on the shelf and "rented" again for another 48 hours of playback at a later time.
The disc could also be converted to a "silver" disc (unlimited playback on a single player) or "gold" (unlimited playback on ANY player) for an additional fee. (Can't remember the pricing for this.)
The player communicated with the DIVX "mothership" using a standard 2400 baud modem. This communication would indicate what you had been watching (and might need to be charged rental fees on) and enable the DIVX portion of the player box to continue operation. If you didn't "phone home" the DIVX features simply stopped working.
The biggest problems with DIVX were:
+ It was ahead of its time.
+ People didn't "get it".
+ Movie companies didn't "get it", and didn't provide decent titles in DIVX format.
...may go the way of the dodo just like the drive-in theater.
Drive-in Theatres may not be as popular as they once were, but they are not extinct yet. There is one near my parent's place. I remember watching Star Wars through a telescope when I was young.
They're not popular around big cities because of light pollution, land prices, and the closeness of indoor movie theatres. However around smaller cities and towns, they are still to be found.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Since these are probably DCSS protected discs, what is to keep one from copying them before they "melt down"? There is no effective copy protection here and all they are doing is to pollute the environment and possibly damage the consumer's DVD player.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Something like 90% of the hydrogen used in the world today comes from a company called Air Products that produced it from methane. The process produces about twice the CO2 per unit energy made available as hydrogen fuel as does simple burning of gasoline.
Your source, as I suspect you know, is a possibility for the future, but not the reality of today.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
... I NEED to rip a DVD every time I like to see one, because "original" DVDs simply don't play on opensource or free players like Media Player Classic. And off course, I will never buy the crappyware from Cyberlink to this.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
sealant and let it dry ?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Now, /. community, use this to justify piracy! go!
Actually, wouldn't you be making a backup copy in case your original stops functioning. IANAL, but wouldn't this mean that the DVD that you would burn as a backup count as your legal copy of that media? --The FNP
I don't know about everyone else, but thats about 10 times more than I'd be willing to pay for a defective movie.
You might claim that its not defective, but what else do you call something that breaks 48 hours after you buy it?
I'll just keep getting my movies from mcdonalds for free (or $1, if I ever run out of promo codes)
So, I've been thinking of this idea to help reduce this kind of landfill-feeding stupidity. What about a scheme where companies are forced to pay a tax on the percentage of a product they produce that is not recyclable. For example, let's say a DVD is 100% non-recyclable. The company would then have to pay an n% tax on 100% of their selling cost (or some similar scheme). Sure, they could pass the cost on to customers, but companies who made "greener" products could then sell for less. What say ye?
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
Can you wash the disks before you play them?
1) Open self-destructing DVD 2) Spray said DVD with something that prevents oxygen from reaching the disk, cheap hairspray seems like a good candidate here but there are probably even better materials that could be used. 3) Your self-destructing disk fails to degrade? This is aside from just ripping the, of course. And perhaps you could then return it demanding a refund because it was defective, it failed to seld-destruct!
... why are we still using little shiny discs to hold digitial data?
/LabMonkey09
call me crazy, call me a conspiracy nut, but my money is that all dvd's made today will be coasters 10 years after their date of manufacture. what better way to insure that you will buy it again on blue ray, and then again when downloaded content is fully in the swing of things.
the logic of my crazy is that these flexplay disc's work (or rather break) because of oxidization. bassicly they rust in 3-5 days and can no longer be played.
so what if all dvd's were engineered to oxidize at a slower rate. like say 1.3x the length of a format cycle.
BUT - true audiophiles know that great sound is important, AND it can be has on a relatively shoestring budget. I've put less than $1000 into my stereo and continue to tinker with parts, build components and troll the local pawn shops in search of gear to try next. It really is about the sound.
Also, consider homebrewing your own gear. There are a TON of great designs on the web with parts costs of less than $200. It's fun and it sounds great. :)
And the term "landfill" is much too neutral. "Garbage heap" is more like it.
So long as each contain some sort of mission, preferably an impossible one, then I am OK with it.
Also 30 seconds of Mission Impossible theme upon startup is mandatory!
Too bad your ISP is looking into tiered pricing that will make this less attractive.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
#1) These are recyclable -- they offer a return address for you and recycling center information.
#2) From the site "The viewing window begins when the consumer opens the package and exposes the Flexplay DVD to air. A Flexplay DVD can be watched as many times as a consumer wants during the pre-set viewing window."
Since I am an alien and live in an Argon atmosphere, I wonder if they would degenerate?
Bzzzt. Sorry. Both are stupid. /p?
So, when Flexplay fails, will we get a FleXPlaY codec to memorialize it?
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
This is being sold by Staples? Staples sells office supplies, not entertainment. They expect people to pick up a self-destructing DVD while stocking up on printer paper and Post-It notes?
>>Netflix is positioned to become the next "cable company" without having to lay all this cable.
Not if the cable companies have their say in the matter. We're hearing more & more talk of tiered bandwidth packages lately; every major cable company in the US is looking at this model...
Well, how's that different from...
1. Rent movie.
The law looks differently at "I Bought It" than "I Rented It".
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
DIVX used a special media player that phoned home to unlock playing the disc. This is a separate technology that basically self-destructs the disc.
... then Staples should have no problem paying for a return policy on the discs to keep some of the more toxic chemicals on these discs OUT of _my_ state's LANDFILLS! I mean, we _are_ trying to be a GREEN country, aren't we? (Some might note the sense of sarcasm in the last sentence, are are correct.)
This useless space for sale, inquire at front desk.
An earlier poster suggested spraying, boiling or doing something to treat the "DVD" to keep it from decomposing. Assuming something like this is possible, is that a violation of DMCA? I mean, is spraying a special coating on a digital reproduction hacking? Are we going to have "intellectual property" owners lobbying Congress to plug the "hairspray hole?"
At what point do we as a people say enough? It's time for these dinosaur media conglomerates to die out already. They don't make art and music. They don't provide a useful service to society (certainly not for the outrageous profits they rake in at the expense of both consumers and artists). A long time ago when distributing film and music was a comparatively enormous and complex undertaking these businesses may have had a use. Today they merely serve to stifle creativity, exploit artists and gouge consumers. We don't need them.
So, within 2 weeks someone will have figured out how to stop the chemical reaction that destroys the disc.
That will make for an amusing ending to this technology.
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
I know Zip.ca plays the old mail-the-plastic game. But can I subscribe to some TV-like net-based service in Canada?
That sounds great and all but what of bandwidth caps and low bandwidth? I might see something I want to watch but now have to wait for that 1GB file to download at 41KB/s? Great I'll see you in 7 hours. Oh damn I just blew my bandwidth cap and now I get to pay an extra buck a movie to my ISP.
Granted, all pirating sucks, its measurably better to at least pay for it once.
Pricing is always a balance of of what the market will bear versus the true value. In the case of movies, the market certainly can bear paying for it to some extent - and at least once. Also, by paying for it once you acknowledge the artists and craftsmen while thumbing your nose at the profiteers.
If you never pay for it at all you are just a common thief and deserve to lose a hand.
Like e.g. Accuphase vs. NAD, yes.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Was I the only one who immediately though of toilet paper as perfectly fitting this description?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
They provide a case with high quality printed sleeve, and media to rip from? Except for being priced $4 too high, what's not to like?
Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse.." and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.."
and listen to the music.
It ain't always easy on awful crap systems.
Price ain't the issue, sound is. It's hard to give some music a fair listen on junk.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
$5 at staples for a self-destructing DVD for 48 hours. Or $1 out of the red box outside of Jewel for until you return it. Hmm... That's a tough one. These guys have heard of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video haven't they?...
I know consumers already told us they don't want a product like this, but let's give it to them anyway!
We waste for our convenience and comfort. Doesn't matter if it's bottled water, air conditioning or disposable DVD's. If you buy a few of these a month how does it affect your overall impact? I personally throw away most blank optical media I record within a short time and I burn a lot for various things.
As a mass of people we really only consider two factors being cost and perceived personal benefit and we're gonna put plastic in landfills until we run out of oil and plastic gets expensive... Then we're gonna mine our landfills to get back that plastic once that becomes cost effective.
So waste on cause what you personally do doesn't matter anyway.
If you are serious, and you didn't get it, watch the movie again because there are tons of stuff you will see the second time around. Even if you did get it, watching it again was worthwhile. That was a great movie.
As with many manufacturing processes, a failure in the manufacturing of these disks could result in air leakage during storage. A purchaser would only have to buy one pre-expired disk and that would be the end of their loyalty to the technology, and possibly to the store where they bought it. Just look how big a problem it is when a bad run of DVDs makes it to the stores. If an unexpected environmental condition caused many people to sit down with their popcorn and kids to the disappointment, there would be a failed product. It would have to be engineered so that if something went wrong, the disk would remain ok instead of going bad.
The conspiracy theorist in me likes your thinking, but the pragmatist in me doesn't think that's likely.
Sure, we've seen issues with CD Rot and CD Bronzing and a couple of DVD failure modes, but that seems to have been more of a manufacturing issue than a deliberate ploy by the media manufacturers or the record companies. And I don't believe for a second that it would be in the interests of MPAAFIA members to deliberately introduce a severely limited lifespan for these things, because you'd find that environmental or handling considerations would push a substantial number of time-bombed DVDs over the edge well ahead of time. I think all big corporate entities noticed what happened to Big Tobacco, and know full well that secrets have a habit of getting out - and something like deliberately engineering a ten-year average lifespan for DVDs would be a huge secret that even the legislatosaurus would notice eventually.
I could be wrong, but I thought most of the really severe problems with CDs were with ones pressed prior to the early 90's. Similarly, I was under the impression that most of the oxidation and delamination problems with DVDs were with discs made prior to about 2004. To me, that points more to an improved understanding of the manufacturing process and packaging/environmental factors than to a deliberate "Ha ha, buy it again, suckers!" attitude.
Most likely they have you sign an EULA type contract when you buy it (or have a shrink-wrapped EULA).
True, but keep in mind the work's original medium isn't a normal DVD. It's a DVD that is meant to self destruct after 48 hours.
does this mean than hacks are not violations of DMCA?The adhesive is still an effective technological protection measure to protect the copyrighted material.
I'm not a lawyer, but considering the above I'd find it hard argue it doesn't fit the description of "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work".[1] Of course, if you were ever hauled in front of a court, your lawyer would probably have a field day arguing over whether it fits the definition. But it seems to here, so circumventing it still puts you afoul of the DMCA.
They provided technology for the ORIGINAL disk to self-destruct. You are not breaking tech to make copies, you are *preventing breakage*.By preventing the decay, you're circumventing an technological protection measure. If it seems ridiculous that stopping your discs from decaying might be illegal, it's because of the ridiculousness of making circumvention illegal on its own.
Even if you weren't breaking the DMCA, plain old contract law might screw you over. They tell you the discs only last 48 hours. You buy knowing they're only supposed to last 48 hours. They sell the discs at a discount on the understanding that you will only be able to use them for 48 hours. It seems pretty clear that it's a term of the contract of sale that you're only allowed to use the stuff for 48 hours.
From there, it's not much of a step to argue that the disc only comes with a 48-hour licence to the copyrighted materials on it. Or that by buying the disc, you're accepting a licence to access the stuff on the disc for 48 hours only. After all, if you wanted a longer licence, you would have bought a longer-lasting disc. Either way, hang on to the copyrighted material beyond that 48 hour period and you're in breach of your licence. Which means you're in breach of copyright.
Of course, this probably won't stop you from making backup copies of these discs—assuming fair use rights still mean anything. It's just that you'd have to destroy these backups after your licence expires. Which means you still end up with no movie at the end of the 48 hours.
It doesn't look like the law will let you use these DVDs to burn a movie collection on the cheap, even if you could stop the adhesive from messing up the disc.
References
But you do own it. It's not like you only have a limited licence to use it, you own the disc. You're free to do anything you want with it, except copy it (hence the name—copyrights). You can watch it once or 100 times. If you while you are watching it 50 people happen to walk past your living room window, they can feel free to stick and see how the movie ends.[1] You can re-sell the disc afterwards. You can use it to prop up your table. You can lend it to your friend if you want.[2] For all intents and purposes, you own the disc like you own a car.
Of course, owning it doesn't mean you can go around barfing up copies of it all over the place. But that's another story.
Footnotes
[1] It's probably a violation of the current copyright law somewhere, but I would argue the justification for it is weak. Arguing that you're not allowed to show a DVD you own in front of a crowd isn't going to stand up in court if they keep marketing it as "ownership" rather than "licensing". If I own a DVD, I can lend it to 50 people one after the other. If I can allow 50 people to watch it sequentially, I can allow 50 people to watch it in parallel. On a really big TV. Or a projection screen. The fact that the studio never foresaw me doing so, and didn't factor it into the price of the DVD, is their fault.
That still wouldn't make it legal, but suggests a direction law reform should take in future.
[2] The MPAA will probably not like you doing this—may threaten to sue you over it—but at the end of the day it's still your right to do it.
So I guess they finally found a productive use for the Ritek G04/G05 dye....
It should be noted that DVD-D is not an actual Digital Video Disc Standard and they can be copied, almost rendering the point of the product useless. No DRM + ownership of the disc = no DMCA violation.